SIR ISAAC NEWTON

Sean Cox

FIELDS OF STUDY

Physicist,

Mathematician,

Astronomer,

Natural philosopher,

Alchemist

Theologian,

He has been considered by many to be the greatest and most

influential scientist who ever lived.

EARLY LIFE

Born in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near

Grantham in Lincolnshire.

Born January 4, 1643

He had a passion for learning.

Newton entered his uncle's old College, Trinity

College Cambridge, on 5 June 1661.

Newton's aim at Cambridge was a law degree.

Newton studied the philosophy of Descartes, Gassendi,

Hobbes, and in particular Boyle. The mechanics of the

Copernican astronomy of Galileo attracted him and he also

studied Kepler's Optics.

He recorded his thoughts in a book which he titles

‘Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae’ (Certain

Philosophical Questions)

GRADUATION

Newton was elected a

scholar on 28 April 1664 and

received his bachelor's

degree in April 1665

MATHEMATICS

Newton made contributions to all branches of mathematics then studied, but is

especially famous for his solutions to the modern problems in analytical geometry of

drawing tangents to curves and defining areas bounded by curves.

Not only did Newton discover that these problems were inverse to each other, but he

discovered general methods of resolving problems of curvature, embraced in his "method

of fluxions" and "inverse method of fluxions“.

Newton used the term "fluxion" (from Latin meaning "flow")because he imagined a

quantity "flowing" from one magnitude to another.

Newton's work on pure mathematics was hidden from all but his journalists until 1704,

when he published, with Opticks, about the quadrature of curves and another on the

classification of the cubic curves.

His Cambridge lectures, delivered from about 1673 to 1683, were published in 1707.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WITH THE APPLE? (GRAVITATION)

Probably the more correct version of the story is that Newton, upon

observing an apple fall from a tree, began to think along the following

lines: The apple is accelerated, since its velocity changes from zero as it

is hanging on the tree and moves toward the ground. Thus, by Newton's

2nd Law there must be a force that acts on the apple to cause this

acceleration. Let's call this force "gravity", and the associated

acceleration the "acceleration due to gravity". Then imagine the apple

tree is twice as high. Again, we expect the apple to be accelerated toward

the ground, so this suggests that this force that we call gravity reaches to

the top of the tallest apple tree.

SIR ISAAC'S MOST EXCELLENT IDEA

Now came Newton's truly brilliant perception: if the

force of gravity reaches to the top of the highest tree,

might it not reach even further; in particular, might it not

reach all the way to the orbit of the Moon! Then, the orbit

of the Moon about the Earth could be a consequence of the

gravitational force, because the acceleration due to gravity

could change the velocity of the Moon in just such a way

that it followed an orbit around the earth.

By such reasoning, Newton came to the conclusion

that any two objects in the Universe use

gravitational attraction on each other, with the force

having

a universal form: called the

Law of Universal Gravitation.

OPTICS Newton's first work as Professor was on optics. Every scientist since

Aristotle had believed light to be a simple object, but Newton,

through his experience when building telescopes, believed otherwise:

it is often found that the observed images have colored rings around

them.

His crucial experiment showing that white light is composite

consisted in taking beam of white light and passing it through a

prism; the result is a wide beam displaying a spectrum of colors.

If this wide beam is made to pass through a second prism, the output

is again a narrow beam of white light.

If, however, only one color is allowed to pass (using a screen), the

beam after the second prism has this one color again.

Newton concluded that white light is really a mixture of many

different types of colored rays, and that these colored rays are not

composed of more basic things.

DIAGRAM OF NEWTON'S EXPERIMENTS ON THE COMPOSITION OF WHITE LIGHT.

Beam of white light passing it through a prism resulting in a wide beam displaying a spectrum of colors.

If the wide beam is made to pass through a second prism, the output is again a narrow beam of white light.

But, if only one color is allowed to pass (using a screen), the beam after the second prism has this one color again.

RELIGIOUS VIEWS Newton was a monotheist who believed in biblical prophecies

but was Antitrinitarian (doesn’t believe in the Trinity).

In Newton's eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolization.

INFLUENCES

Henry More- an English philosopher

Polish Brethren- members of the Minor Reformed

Church of Poland. They were Nontrinitarian

(Antitrinitarian) just like Newton.

Robert Boyle- natural philosopher, chemist,

physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in

theology.

DEATH

Died March 20, 1727 at the age

of 84 in Kensington, England.

SOURCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

http://physics.ucr.edu/~

wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node58.html

http://physics.ucr.edu/~

wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node59.html

http://

www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Newton.h

tm